Welcome back to class, students!
Have you heard about your AMS Student Union and what they have been up to?
In late November, the AMS ‘president’ Bijan Ahmadian, insinuated that the UBC Social Justice Centre was trying to support terror by helping with a donation a Gaza-bound Canadian flotilla.
Bijan just wanted to make sure the AMS was not ‘aiding terror’ – his approach to figuring out the ‘truth’. This suspicion is oppressive and extremely unfair. PalentineSpeaks.net published an article asking students to write to Mr. Ahmadian and urge him to represent the will of the community he has deeply disappointed. They wrote:
“Despite all that [reasons why we should support alleviating suffering in Palestine], Mr. Ahmadian (exploiting his position as president of the AMS) has demonstrated worrisome disregard to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. His political stance is not representative of the UBC community and is not reflective of UBC’s values and dedication to human rights. Mr. Ahmadian expressed unacceptable belligerence by freezing the transaction and disallowing the receipt of the donation by the SJC. By blocking this generous donation, Mr. Ahmadian is complicit in the efforts to deprive Palestinians from a decent living; the attainment of their rudimentary human rights and their access to basic human needs.”
It shows how far removed are the worlds of students who exercise a critical social awareness in their lives and some self-selected AMS ‘executives’ like Ahmadian, known for being against other forms of student grass roots organization, and for enforcing decisions without consultation. There is an inherent conflictual pattern that remains constant in UBC student politics – an authoritarianism that inverts the ideal relationship between those who are supposed to make official decisions (AMS executives) and those who put them in power (voting students). Students should be making sure executives take actions they support, not the other way around (i.e., executives making sure their decisions are enforced regardless of the support for an alternative).
The AMS, by not being able to collect enough information on what students actually need, is able to get away with a poor decision making and innovative projects record, concentrating on personal agendas, grandstanding, and petty disputes over who has the last word. This is only possible because the AMS has not been able to set up a scientific way of assessing student needs, even with all their resources. They are more concentrated on running their businesses, jello wrestling, merry making and computer games during council. Voting became a computer game too, with a lot of clicking around and laughing about trivialities.
By having the final say on something, executives can pull out tricks like Bijan’s suggestion that peace activists and terrorists could somehow be associated. His suggestion has caused a furor among activists, because they have a better sense of how things actually are in the real world. How can something like this happen? People complained about the UN issue last year, but this is light years beyond.
Some would argue that lessons from the past indicate we should expect this fiasco to lead nowhere, and Ahmadian to find some way to still receive support from his tunnel-vision support base. The AMS needs to reform its current structure at the risk of collapsing or letting uninformed types take over its ranks and come up with ridiculous decisions that shatter social relations with students who are hoping to help make the world better, not worse.
Keeping away from the AMS may be a great idea for students, in a practical sense. Students should be in charge of where their own money goes. Stonewalling attempts by the Social Justice Centre is something that always happens in the AMS. Ahmadian last year made sure that students with disabilities did not acquire a council seat. Attacking the students who complained to the UN about skyrocketing tuition last year was one of Ahmadian’s pet projects. He was successful and took over the Presidency under muddy circumstances.
Yearly, the easy to hack computer voting system used by the AMS leads to suspicions of fraud with multiple and ‘ghost’ votes. Students who were caught cheating in the past were allowed to remain in their positions because they were friends with the councilors. They had been roommates, partied together, and helped each other, so it was impossible for them to live up to their own statute and allow the rightful winner to take up the position. This ended up in a vicious cycle of poor performance that drove students away from AMS politics.
The AMS has for many years served as a bullying ground for glory-seekers to oppress other students and laugh over a beer later, paid for with student money. That is, unless people with a consciousness step in and make a difference. It is interesting how the AMS Council works as a platform for students to attack each other and avoid cooperation. The whole system needs a full external appraisal by serious consultants, and executives who do not engage in backstabbing the students who give up a lot of their time helping to develop a political consciousness on campus.
However, getting too involved and invest time in the AMS is probably not recommended for most students, as you would probably be wasting a lot of time and effort, get ridiculous resistance to some of your best ideas, and people will forget about it once they move on to the real world and get jobs. Perhaps passing a referendum and giving it [the AMS] all away to the university would be a great idea to make it all work better (just like the UBC administration), since it is already the way it is, and so students who long to become conformist bureaucrats and play computer games during council meetings can play being politicians, ignoring grave social issues.
We have noticed that fields like Commerce and many fields in the Applied Sciences lack a critical social history curriculum. Truth be said, there are plenty of engineers we know who have a deep critical sense of history, but they have acquired this knowledge in their spare time or learned from their parents. When it comes to executive performance at the AMS, this dynamic has had serious consequences, especially for students who do not share some of the privileges taken for granted by those who get to decision-making positions.
In fact, if AMS focused on issues that mattered to students, they would have implemented proper consultation strategies and reformed their feedback and budget system, as some of us suggested to no avail in the past. As UBC Alumni, we are concerned that ‘our’ Alma Mater Society is ruled by irresponsible and muddled-minded executives with zombie worldviews, and we would be very hesitant to contribute to AMS in the future. I hope students can come up with their own solutions. However, they have little time to try to fix this, and they will easily realize it is most likely a waste of their effort, unless they come up with an incredible grass roots movement.
Some people who accumulate political positions and other fake honors believe anything they decide must be right, and are deaf to alternative suggestions. They are blocked by their huge egos and fed by an academic system that is still keen on giving ‘prizes’ to the ‘most excellent’, and invariably putting down other, more original and creative efforts that ‘slip away’ with those who do not get to give a graduating speech, attend the (largely abominable) ‘student leadership conference’ or receive a medal in front of a stargazing audience. Finally, students are getting what they voted for last year when they chose Ahmadian and his dazzled, systemically misinformed sympathizers. It would be possible for students to reform the AMS, but it would take a concerted educational effort.
This movie helps contextualizing why AMS prefers conformism to authority rather than independent critical thinking:
References:
http://palestinespeaks.net/2010/11/sphr-ams-president-bijan-ahmadian-blocks-humanitarian-relief-to-gaza/
http://ubyssey.ca/news/ams-investigating-cbg-for-terror-ties/
